As some of you may know, for African-Americans, the month of February is dedicated to Black History Month. When we were children, we learned about the noble Harriet Tubman and the courageous Rosa Parks. Although the two women are important, we were deprived of studying the works of other influential black women that were not mentioned in our history books.
Don’t worry! Her Campus TAMU is not going to let this month pass without recognizing some of the most talented and hardworking black women in American history.
1. Shirley Chisholm
Chisholm is basically the mother of black women in politics. In the late 1960’s she was the first black woman to be elected to Congress. Writers often described her as “feisty” rather than persistent. She was determined to implement change in the United States. Chisholm ran for president in 1972 and won over three states. She made history by becoming the first black candidate to get as far as she did in a presidential race. She was also the first woman to run with the Democratic Party.
2. Clenora Hudson-Weems, Ph.D.
Have you ever opened your Twitter and saw a guy referring to a woman as a “female?” Well, here’s an explanation as to why that bothered you so much:
“But there is another crucial issue that accounts for the use of the term woman(ism). The term ‘woman,’ and by extension ‘womanism,’ is far more appropriate than the term ‘female’ (feminism), as only a female of the human race can be a woman. ‘Female,’ on the other hand, can refer to a member of the animal or plant kingdom, as well as to a member of the human race. Finally, in electronic and mechanical terminology, there is a female counterbalance to the male correlative. Hence, terminology derived from the word ‘woman’ is more suitable and more specific when naming a group of the human race.”-Clenora Hudson-Weems, Ph.D.
Hudson-Weems is the women who discovered the meaning of “Africana Womanism.” She enlightened us all by explaining the distinct differences between “feminism” and “Africana Womanism.”
3. Sojourner Truth
Truth was a slave woman known for her famous speech “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” This speech was delivered to the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851. Before Sojourner Truth got up to speak, no white woman was pleased with the fact that she was there on behalf of women’s rights. The woman in charged of the convention had several people confront her encouraging her not to allow Truth to speak. They warned the woman that Truth would only give a bad reputation to their community and organization by mixing women’s rights and black’s rights. Truth began to speak and before she knew it, the audience was in tears. She began by explaining how strong she truly was by showing them her muscle and stating her height. She was 6’1″. She said that she had 13 children, could work and eat just as hard as any man, and was physically capable of almost anything. After her speech, whites were astonished by all of the ideas she presented and rushed to her side to meet her.
Truth did more than speak that day; she changed the minds and hearts of so many slaveholders.
4. Toni Morrison
Morrison is the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and won a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. She was a firm believer in separating color from race.
5. Harriet Jacobs
Jacobs wrote “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” At the time when she was writing the piece, she used random names for the characters. Later, readers realized that she was writing about her experience with her slave master and the child that they had together. Before she became a freed slave, she hid in a small space for seven years and had food passed to her through a tiny hole. Although it was not common for slaves to write and read, Jacobs elegantly recorded her experience along with her feelings as a slave.